a/n: and so here it is: the last chapter of the first part.
Parris Island, South Carolina / Stillwater, Pennsylvania: 1987
Over When It's Over
Once it was all said and done, recruiter talked to, physical tests passed, forms signed - after all the hurry-up-and-wait involved in the military enlistment process - Gibbs left for boot camp in January, four months after his mother's death, two months after Natalie's second birthday, and on the very first day of nineteen eighty-seven. The Marine Corps' east coast training depot was twelve hours from Stillwater, and in the three months he would be gone to be broken down and built back up, Jenny was only allowed to contact him in writing.
No phone calls, no care packages - just letters. She didn't mind writing - so she wrote, when she had time. When she didn't, she placed a quiet note from herself in the envelope, a reassurance that she loved him and missed him, and folded up whatever drawings Natalie had done that week to send along.
She hoped he liked that she was doing that, and it didn't embarrass him or anything - not that she'd ever imagine Gibbs to be embarrassed by Natalie. Despite his desperation to hightail it out of Stillwater, he'd been genuinely sorry he'd miss anything Natalie did - and she was sorry, too, though she tried not to let it be bitterness.
She didn't think he had it any easier at boot camp - she didn't want to be at boot camp herself - but the bottom line was that she was still here, working a job that barely let her save anything, enduring the looks that still hadn't faded - and they were coupled with pity now, because everyone quietly seemed to assume Gibbs had abandoned her - and dealing with the fact that she was in some kind of - limbo.
She was eighteen years old, nineteen in May, technically done with school - once she got her equivalency, since she'd missed out on her summer chance to solidify her diploma - mother of a two-year-old, and part of a long distance relationship that had an uncertain trajectory.
Back in January, most of Stillwater's youth had gone back to the various colleges they'd started at in August and September, and she watched them go, unable to shake the feeling that she should be there. It was especially hard to watch her best friend, Alison Flynn, go off to Rutgers University with a happy-go-lucky smile on her face.
Instead of classes and campus activities and internships, Jenny was working whenever she could, whenever she was needed; sometimes at the public library, but mostly at Deborah Henry's dress shop.
On this particular early March afternoon, she was steaming the wrinkles out of some sophomore's prom dress a few moments before five, keeping one eye on the machine and one eye on Natalie as she played with an etch-a-sketch in an arm chair.
"Mommy," Natalie said, turning the tablet around. "Turtle," she said, in babyish pronunciation.
The picture she showed Jenny looked absolutely nothing like a turtle, but Jenny smiled.
"Wow, Bug!" she exclaimed. "You're a regular Vincent Van Gogh!"
"Go-go," Natalie giggled smugly.
"Mmm-hmm," Jenny crooned.
"To Daddy," Natalie said.
"You'll have to draw it on paper when we get home," Jenny said. "Remember? We can only send Daddy paper things. Letters and drawings."
Natalie turned her toy back around and then shook it, laughing as the picture disappeared. Jenny smiled, and looked back at the dress - it seemed like all of the wrinkles were sorted, and she'd definitely done a fair job of repairing the rip that had magically appeared in it. The owner claimed a cat had gotten into the closet, but it looked to Jenny like someone had been playing in it in a little pre-Prom fashion show, and stepped on the hem, creating a rip near the waist.
